Antioch hostage incident had "doom written all over it'

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, July 14, 1998

1998-07-14 04:00:00 PDT ANTIOCH; CONTRA COSTA COUNTY -- Trying to resolve a hostage incident is akin to juggling nitroglycerine. Often, experts say, the situation blows up in your face for no discernible reason.

And the risk is statistically greater if an armed, despondent man seizes his own family. Said San Francisco's top police negotiator, Lt. Dirk Beijen:

"Those situations tend to have doom written all over them."

Nothing better illustrates the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't nature of hostage negotiations than two now-infamous standoffs in Antioch.

After jealous husband Joel Souza armed and barricaded himself inside his home with his two young children in July 1993, officers cut off water and electricity, creating a sweltering hothouse, and gave him 10 minutes to surrender.

As the countdown rose to a crescendo, Souza shot both children to death and killed himself.

Exactly five years later, Antioch police faced a virtual deja vu when despondent murder suspect Carlos Joseph Ramirez locked himself inside his ex-girlfriend's house with their two toddlers. This time, officers opted to wait it out - which they did, from 6 a.m. Friday to just before midnight Saturday.

It was at mid-conversation, police say, that Ramirez began his own frantic countdown and opened fire, fatally shooting both daughters and killing himself.

The only certainty is that if it ends badly, the second-guessing begins. Souza's widow sued, contending that police had exacerbated a tense situation. The city paid $175,000 to settle.

And in the aftermath of the latest crime, family and friends of Ramirez say they might have been able to avert tragedy had police behaved differently.

His great-uncle Francisco Ramirez, rebuffed in his offer to mediate, insisted, "If they had let me talk to him, I could have talked him out of it." And Carlos' mother, whom police did allow to speak to her son, told reporters his sole desire was to talk to his ex-girlfriend.

But experts say Antioch police followed proper procedure in limiting contact to Ramirez, and emphatically endorsed Antioch's decision not to put Cami Viramontes on the line.

No untrained negotiators&lt;

"In general, you don't use non-trained negotiators, and when a situation started because of a guy's troubles with his girlfriend, it certainly would not be wise to have him speak to her," said Tom Cupples, who retired after 25 years with the FBI as a master instructor of hostage negotiations at the agency's training academy.

"If he's angry with her, something she says could set him off," Cupples continued. "And he might use that as an opportunity to use her as his target audience for acting out . . . by harming their children."

Frank Bolz, who co-created the New York Police Department's hostage guidelines and was NYPD's chief negotiator for nearly a decade, said: "We do not use the priest, the rabbi, the mother, the wife, the girlfriend. . . . Odds are if he got along with his family or had somebody he felt he could confide in, he wouldn't be there.

"I know the cops out there will probably feel really bad, but from what I know, I think what they did was absolutely correct."

Hostage takers or barricaded suspects fall into four categories: criminals who take captives in desperation when a caper is botched; mentally ill people in the throes of delusion; terrorists, and the despondent.

The latter group - people depressed about failed marriages, financial failures, work troubles and the like - make up the overwhelming majority.

"I get the sense your guy was a guy to whom it seemed that the world was closing in," said Cupples. "If warrants are out, he knows the police are still looking for him. . . . Maybe the only thing that makes sense to him in his life is his girlfriend, and now (she's) leaving."

When negotiators arrive at the scene of an incident, their first job is to learn everything they can about the man behind the barricade. They talk to his family, his friends, his neighbors and his boss, and they check for prior arrests and other records that offer clues to his personality and how best to approach him.

"A lot of these guys like Carlos perceive that the world hasn't paid them enough attention," said Bolz. "If they were to lie on the street and bang their head against the concrete, people would just step around them."

Only after negotiators have been briefed and given time for the suspects to pass the initial panic phase do they contact them directly, usually over the phone.

And whereas police used to cut off the power, set ultimatums and ultimately storm the barricade, these days they typically wait and keep talking.

The call it "ventilating."

It gives them a better chance to establish rapport, and it gives the gunman time to bring his expectations back to earth.

One legendary case involved an Illinois man who took an elderly couple hostage and began demanding a million dollars, air transportation and a passport good worldwide. As the hours passed, his demands nosedived: He was willing to settle for a pack of cigarettes and a cold beer - and even offered the cops $3 for them.

In the case of Carlos Ramirez, Antioch police had arranged for staffing throughout the weekend, brought in San Francisco psychologist Chris Hatcher for advice, kept water and electricity on, severed cable TV only when the media aired shots of the SWAT team, and used a bullhorn to keep reinitiating phone contact after Ramirez would hang up in anger.

One dialogue between Ramirez and a negotiator lasted an hour.

"Time is on our side'&lt;

"What we've learned over the years," said the SFPD's Beijen, "is that time is on our side."

That guideline holds only so long as hostages are deemed not to be in imminent danger. And that, of course, is a rough rubric to calculate across the barricades - particularly when Ramirez, unlike Souza, had a history of violence.

Police said he had kept assuring them he was caring for his daughters, ages 3 and 1 - tending one's diaper rash, feeding them hot dogs and Pedialyte. Friends and relatives also insisted, "Carlos would never hurt the children because he loves them."

Although Antioch has yet to release a transcript, negotiators apparently tried to do what experts advise in similar standoffs: help him visualize a better future.

But when they encouraged him that he could reunite with Cami and end up someday happily visiting Disneyland with their children, he apparently grew agitated - another cue, experts say, not to arrange for the couple to connect.

Although there are no absolutes in hostage negotiation, experts follow some guidelines: Never say "surrender" and never say "no." Instead, they may respond with a noncommittal "let me see" if a hostage taker asks for something impossible to deliver, such as weapons, additional hostages or the release of legally held prisoners.

Cops try not to lie&lt;

"It's generally not advisable to lie to a hostage taker," said Cupples. "If he were to say, "What happened to that woman I shot?' you don't tell him she's dead. You tell him you don't know her status at this point. But you don't tell him she's OK and out playing volleyball because if he hears on the radio she's dead, you've just blown your credibility forever."

The Souza case has haunted many of its Antioch participants for years, and the Ramirez case is likely to have a similar effect.

"People do tend to take ownership of problems when they're negotiating - not that they should, but they do," said Beijen. "They do bond with the suspect to a certain degree and with the victims they're trying to rescue."

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Bolz, of New York, said that after failed hostage rescues, he has seen officers experience heart attacks, insomnia, sexual dysfunction and depression - not to mention the scrutiny and lawsuits that may result.

"The cops who do this," he said, "are willing to pay a tremendous amount for the privilege of saving someone's life." &lt;

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